1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to a method for deparaffinizing a formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue, and in particular relates to a method for deparaffinizing a formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue, wherein a step of repeatedly washing the sample with ethanol or an aqueous solution thereof, is not required.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, due to the development of gene detection techniques, it is now possible to interpret the developmental stages of cancer in tumor cells from gene expression profiles of a tumor of a patient. Because, generally, hospitals preserve samples using the formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) technique, FFPE samples are the most convenient type of samples which can be obtained.
At present, a number of techniques for extracting nucleic acid from a formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded sample have been disclosed. However, all of them need complicated and time consuming deparaffinizing steps, such as, washing of a paraffin-containing sample with xylene, and then repeatedly washing the sample with ethanol or an aqueous solution thereof, to wash out the xylene from the sample, so that a subsequently needed water soluble reagent will be able to permeate into and react with the tissues in the sample more completely. The step of washing the sample with ethanol to increase the hydrophilism of tissues in the sample is called rehydration process.
Another deficiency with the conventional steps, is that some clinical samples, such as core needle biopsy FFPE samples, only have a trace of the sample therein. Thus, when the sample is washed with xylene, most of the paraffin slice tissue from the sample in xylene would appear transparent. However, after a high speed centrifugal process, the tissues of the sample, deparaffinized by the xylene, form a transparent precipitation at a bottom of a tube, which eventually loosens and easily floats around. Thus, even if the xylene is carefully removed, it is not guaranteed, that the tissues of the sample will not be removed together with the xylene. Therefore, presently, a new method is needed for deparaffinizing a formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue to overcome the problems mention above.